blogging is dead – so here are my favourite podcasts

Nov14
by TFS on November 14, 2017 at 5:17 pm
Posted In: My Favourite

 

It’s a well known fact that anyone doing blogging nowadays has got their head stuck in the past and are blogs are firmly on their way out 🙂

Podcasts and Vlogging are the new formats of choice!

I haven’t really warmed to the video format yet because if I’m looking at a screen then I’d rather be reading. I can do that at my own pace, which is normally much faster than most Vloggers can get information across, I tend to find.

On the other hand I freaking LOVE podcasts. They come into their own when I’m doing something manual like some DIY or gardening, or even just walking to work and don’t want to risk smashing into 3000 people on a busy London street.

In these situations, podcasts are a great way to either multi task or make use of that otherwise “wasted time” and learn something new, be entertained, or ideally both.

Anyway you get the picture, so here are my top 10 podcasts!

Also please do leave comments below with your favourite ones, any genre allowed, it doesn’t have to be about finance at all! I’m always on the look out for some new and interesting content to listen to! Thanks!

1. Freakonomics

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the Freakonomics books, if not where the hell have you been?! They’re really good so I will link to the two I’ve read here: Freakonomics and Super Freakonomics (<– both amazon affiliate links). If you listen to some of the podcasts and like what you hear then the books are definitely worth reading!

The general gist of Freakonomics is that they take mundane or random subjects and questions, and either find out something new or really interesting about them by applying the rules of economics to it. Such as “Why do most drug dealers still live with their mums?”. If it sounds weird just give a couple of these ago and tell me you didn’t learn something or be entertained:

  • Why Is My Life So Hard? – Learning to be more grateful is always a good thing. This one nails a lot of stuff in this area for me, if you only listen to one of them make sure it’s this one.
  • Chuck E. Cheese’s: Where a Kid Can Learn Price Theory – You wanna hear about adults fighting in a kids restaurant? Then Freakonomics is your podcast! Hilarious and educational at the same time. Hilarioucational? 1
  • There’s A War On Sugar. Is It Justified? – This sort of thing always interests me. I can’t actually remember the final answer so you’ll have to listen to it yourself to find out 🙂
  • How to launch a behaviour change revolution – This is about a big project to use behavioural economics to help people make better decisions (such as save into pensions) but the best bit is that you get to hear Danny Kahneman talk, who just happens to be one of the most awesome dudes on the planet.
  • How Big is My Penis? (And Other Things We Ask Google) – Got to be in there for the name alone. The basic premise is that google search history tells us more about a population than straight up questionnaires, which is usually how social scientists gather data on people, because they can and often will lie, even on anonymous ones! Find out some interesting facts about different countries.
  • Trevor Noah Has a Lot to Say – Never heard of this guy before but he was very funny and likeable on this podcast. I like him.

I’m going to have to stop there as I’ve only gone about 20% of the way down the archive list!

Here’s a link to the full Archive again, there are 300+ episodes so that should keep you going for a while! There are admittedly a few duff ones but it’s a little harsh to be bothered about that after they’ve produced so much amazing stuff for us to listen to, for free.

2. You are not so smart

You are not so smart is a blog which documents tonnes of cognitive biases and heuristics, and the podcast is an extension of that. The way they are presented is very entertaining with random stories to illustrate that you’d never hear anywhere else. There is a lot of behavioural stuff in here so there’s a big crossover with Freakonomics actually, but this focuses far more on the psychology side of it, whereas Freakonomics is obviously more on the economics side. Here are a couple of good ones to get you going:

3. Revisionist History

Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers and The Tipping Point (<– both amazon affiliate links) brings you 10 podcasts about what I would call completely random yet interesting stories from fairly recent history. The idea is that he puts a different spin on some new aspect of it or reveals an untold part of the story, but as I had never heard about most of them anyway I just found the whole thing really rather interesting. They are a bit hit and miss so here are three of the best to get you going:

Blame Game – Absolutely fascinating story about the “Killer” Toyota cars that all got recalled in 2009 due to a constant acceleration “fault”. I had never even heard of this story as it was in the US, and it is well worth a listen to see how mass hysteria can cost companies a helluva lot of money!

The Satire Paradox – I loved this one because A) It has sound clips of Harry Enfield doing “Loadsamoney” in it (brilliant! I can only imagine the looks on US audience faces when listening to this?! 🙂 ) and B) the subject is something I’ve often thought myself about comedy so it was really cool when someone else has looked at it in depth and sort of confirmed my initial suspicions. I won’t spoil it by revealing any more but definitely worth a listen!

The big man can’t shoot – Incredible, almost unbelievable story about how it is statistically proven that NBA basketball players would score from free throws far more often using an underarm throwing technique, yet no one wants to do it for various reasons such as looking like a pussy in front of their team mates. I’ve heard a similar stat about that NFL teams should always throw rather than punt in the 4th down and sports statisticians have proven it and sent the papers to head coaches, and yet still no team does it, because, well, no one else does it. (this also may be mentioned on this podcast in fact, I can’t remember as listened to it about a year ago!). Crazy stuff indeed when there is so much money at stake now in these sports.

4. New Economics Foundation

If you are tired of all the old school economist’s schtick and think there could be better ways to model and run economies then you could do worse than to read what the New Economics Foundation have to say, or better still just listen to the podcast.

I couldn’t find a link to an archive on their actual website but their Soundcloud page does the trick in this instance.

It’s more of a weekly listen to keep up with (kind of) current affairs than evergreen content so I won’t list my favourite ones, but there is some great stuff in the archive – such as this primer on neoliberalism, a word that gets chucked around a lot nowadays and I was never quite sure what it was before I listened to that!

So it’s worth having a look to see if any of the older content subjects piques your interest. I don’t know too much about politics but fair warning, I think they lean rather to the left (Fully Automated Luxury Communism anyone?)

5. The MadFIentist

I have to admit I haven’t listened to many of these but the ones I have done have been great.

  • An interview with The Happy Philosopher – This guy has got some seriously deep insights that definitely chimed with me.
  • The 1500 days crew flip it around and interview TMF – great fun!
  • MMM interview – Obviously you are gonna listen to this one ain’t ya!?!

In fact I’m just looking at the archive and there are quite a few that I really want to listen to right now, so that’s my next week or two’s worth of commuting “edutainment” 2 sorted then! 🙂

 

Others

Here are a few one offs you might find interesting, or ones that I haven’t listened to much but could look promising:

  • How I built this – Basically interviews with a load of entrepreneurs whose idea/business made it big time. I listened to a few including the Kickstarter, Buzzfeed and Samuel Adams 3 ones and they were all really good. Thanks to Jim for putting me onto this one. OMFG I’ve just seen there is an episode about Five Guys… off to listen to that now!
  • The Voluntary Life – I’ve only listened to one of these – This one which is a brilliant summary of the book about Stoicism, A Guide to the Good Life by William B. Irvine – but looking at some of their recent shows, it certainly fits the “promising” category and I think I will be listening to more!
  • Here is an interview with Jacob from ERE by Paul Wheaton
  • Alphachat – The science behind our addictions to social media and tech. Bit random but I found this intensely interesing, to the point where I planned to write up a whole post about certain aspects of it, but unsurprisingly haven’t gotten around to doing it yet. Hat tip to Monevator’s weekend reading section (as often is the case) for that one.

And that is my lot of suggestions, I hope there are some in there that are new to you, and as mentioned before please do add your own suggestions below!

In fact I have to say I’ve found writing this post very useful in and of itself because it’s forced me to go back and look at the archives of some of these I never properly got into, to find that there is loads more stuff still worth listening to. So I guess I better say, thank you to myself, goodbye for now, and until next time…

Happy podding!

(?!?!)

 

Updates and Readers Recommendations

You could obviously just read the comments below but here is a summary of some extra ones, with relevant links:

 

  • ChooseFI Podcast – I realise why I never bothered listening to this before and it’s because most of the episodes look like they’re are over an hour long. I think that is the sign of podcast host(s) who tend to waffle just a little bit, but of course I am willing to be proven wrong and will give it a go! Extra bonus, the latest cast is none other than our own The Escape Artist (along with Alan Donegan of Pop Up Business School), so that might get me into this one nicely! (Thanks EuOrphan for that one!)

 

Jim McG recommended all of the following:

  • TED Radio Hour – I love watching TED talks so this must surely be right up my alley.
  • Waking up with Sam Harris – Looks like a philosophy based podcast, he wrote a book billed as “A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion” so I guess the podcast follows suit. Sounds cool!
  • No Such Thing as a Fish – Is literally just the QI (TV show) researchers by the looks of things, so could be very interesting / entertaining.
  • The Tim Ferriss Show – For a start I don’t like the way he’s called it his “show” – how cheesy. Secondly they are all way too long. I’ve listened to two and they were both actually very good, the MMM interview (1h 52!) and How to Reverse Aging with Art De Vany (2 hours!) so if you don’t mind longer format casts then I would imagine this is actually a very good podcast for you. Although one other criticism, a lot of these titles just sound like bullshit (From Geek to Freak: How I Gained 34 lbs. of Muscle in 4 Weeks) and I don’t want to spend nearly 2 hours of my life finding out if I was right or not.
  • He also mentions RadioLab, This American Life (Both reporting on random but interesting stories by the looks of things) and The Briefing Room (British Politics).

Thanks Jim!

 

Slow Dad recommended:

  • Hardcode History – Looks really interesting but just seen one of the episodes is over 5 hours long! Seeing as my attention span struggles for an hour I might not be able to get into this :). Saying that I’ve always been really interested in Nuclear bomb type stuff so may give this one a listen: The Destroyer of Worlds
  • Seth Godin’s Startup School – Seth Godin is like some sort of startup/business God (it’s in his name for a start) so this looks like it could be really good with lots of actionable advice.
  • He also mentions Meaningful Money, The Property Podcast which I think is this one and also Bigger Pockets.

Thanks Slow Dad!

 

Right, that will keep me going for at least the next year so don’t expect any more blog posts any time soon 😀

Notes:

  1. Surely a candidate for word of the year 2018. Let’s get it out there!!! ↩
  2. Now that is a horrible word. Nowhere near as good as Hilarioucation ↩
  3. Since I started writing this up have also listened to Reddit, AirBnB, Starbucks. Also all of them excellent. The Starbucks one in particular makes you realise they’re actually a pretty decent company and not just some ruthless bunch of arseholes trying to put every independent out of business (Well, the guy on the podcast came across very well, at least) ↩
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